Valentine's Day Cookies

We baked Valentine's Day cookies with Natalee and Brady again this year.  We all had so much fun this time (a big contrast to the stressful evening we had baking Christmas cookies)!  We planned much better this time.  Improvements included painting on the icing, taking a break between rolling the dough and icing the cookies, and encouraging Will to use larger sprinkles rather than the sugar crystal ones. 

Will's dough rolling skills have improved greatly.  He also got much better at
getting more than one cookie out of the dough each time he rolls it.  I was proud of them all
for sharing the two cookie cutters among the three of them without any argument!

This is Grandma Nelson's rolling pin.
I know she would be so proud to see Will using it. 

I talked him into one big smile for the camera!



All the kids were ready to sit down and focus on the icing after they ran
numerous laps around Lindsay's house while the cookies were baking and cooling.



Last time, the kids (especially Will) piled TONS of M&Ms on each cookie.  This time, to
make sure we had enough M&Ms and to practice counting, we made a limit of 5
M&Ms per cookie.  They really did good with that since there was only
one over-the-limit cookie by the end.

You'll notice there is much less decoration on the cookies this time.  That is due in part
to the fact that Will's motivation this time was to decorate as many big
cookies as quickly as he could.  He was operating under the
assumption that all the cookies he decorated were
his to eat!  He slowed down after I explained
they were all to share.